Jodi Picoult Does Not Write Chick Lit

Interview by Andrew Goldman

Feb. 8, 2013

Terrible things happen to your characters. Your new book, “The Storyteller,” features a woman in Auschwitz. Past characters have included victims of a school shooting and parents of kids born with horrible diseases. Is it a little sadistic to put your characters through all this? I don’t think I’m sadistic. I’m superstitious. There’s a part of me that illogically believes if I write about a child with cancer, then my kids are going to be safe. If I write about a school shooting, it won’t happen where we live. If I write about infidelity, then my marriage is going to be safe. Of course it does not work that way, and I know that.

So there’s actually a neurosis behind this? Oh, gosh, of course there is.

What did you, an author of serial No. 1 best sellers, make of “50 Shades of Grey”? E. L. James has been upfront about the fact that this was “Twilight” fan fiction. As a writer, I find it pretty reprehensible that someone who began a story cycle with somebody else’s created characters would go on to make gobs of money off those characters simply by slapping new names on them. Honestly, if I were Stephenie Meyer, I wouldn’t have been that gracious.

You have bristled when others have labeled you a chick-lit author. I don’t mind the term “chick lit.” I don’t happen to write it, so I think it’s funny when people assume I do just because I happen to have a vagina. It would be news to the 47 percent of people who write me fan mail who happen to be men to find out that I write chick lit.

But the cover of this book is obviously marketed to women. I agree. But I have learned to trust that the marketing departments know what they’re doing. When 60 percent of book buyers are women, you can’t fault a publisher for targeting that audience.

You’re leaving your longtime publisher Simon & Schuster for Random House. Why? A lot of reasons. I have great relationships with people at Simon & Schuster. I’m not leaving in a huff, and I’m not upset at anybody. I just needed to try something new to reach a new level.

A new level of sales? It’s not necessarily sales; it’s recognition. There’s a handful of what I would call the brand-name authors. Patterson, Evanovich. That’s where I would like to head.

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Jodi PicoultCreditChristian Oth for The New York Times

Whenever people have asked you what’s the worst book you’ve read, you’ve consistently said “The Notebook,” by Nicholas Sparks. Aren’t you afraid you’re going to bump into him? One of the reasons that I say what I say about Nicholas Sparks is because I have bumped into him.

What happened? No way. I’m not going into that. But my feeling about “The Notebook” is that it’s a terrific story poorly told.

Certain people in the literary community have said that because you write a book every year like clockwork, your process must be less creative. I’ve heard the word “formulaic” come up when people criticize my books. Why? Because I have a trial in many of my books. I don’t know that John Grisham is called formulaic very often, so it is kind of interesting.

In 2010, you were critical of this paper because it reviewed Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom” twice in one week, which you found unsurprising because he is a “white male literary darling.” It took me by surprise when that blew up. I didn’t feel like I was saying something that everyone didn’t already know, that women are reviewed less frequently and differently than men and there are fewer female reviewers.

Who do you think should have been reviewed instead? A woman who writes genre commercial fiction would be great, even better if it’s a woman of color. I don’t have anyone in mind.

During the Franzen kerfuffle, you mentioned you hadn’t read his book. Did you ever get to it? I read about half of it, and then I stopped.